I bought my 8 gigs a year ago for about 200€, and have never even thought about regretting it. It's worth it IMO, but I guess not all people are such heavy users. There's a guy on this forum BTW (I think it's wuyanxu) whose 8 gigs is constantly running out.
yeah, thats obvious, one card would be cooler. but a solid case makes that a...minor benefit. less power usage is true, though recent reviews have shown that the extra power usage of an sli or crossfire setup is minimal if you are comparing setups that equal one higher end card in performance. as far as drivers not being reliable, i think you're still living in 2007 lol...things are much improved. many games scale well. as far as 2 cards costing more, thats not the case and kinda the point of sli crossfire for a smart shopper. you get 2 cards that are cheaper but perform the same or better than the higher end card, like my previosu post demonstrates
i'd still never have an sli setup, seems like more to go wrong to me. i used to have an 8800GT and can guarantee two would be hotter and probably swallow more wattage than my single GTX280 which is probably the performance you'd get.
The performance doesn't scale well enough yet, only close to 200% in very specific cases. I think UT3 did very well with SLI? Anyway, there aren't any games that I play that make my card struggle at 1920x1200.. I don't care much about top settings, I turn some down in FPSes (bloom, motion blur) just so I can play multiplayer easier anyway. SLI/CF isn't worth it for anything lower than 1920x1200, right? (Besides Crysis, that game throws everything off)
what goes wrong exactly? ive been buillding pc's for years. and over the past couple of years have built many crossfire/sli rigs and not one has been returned (knock on wood) for any issues. additionally, most reviews i have seen show an sli 8800 gt setup with an intel quadcore of some type running sub 300 watts, where a similar setup with gtx 280 runs around 320-330. depends on the eye candy you want. lots of games these days can get demanding if you ratchet it up real good, even on 1680x1050. but yeah, if the games you play run smooth with one card, then 2 cards make no sense. i just try to give my customers every ounce of future-proofing i can with their budget. the last rig i built gave darn near 4870x2 performance for half the price (for the gpu). not trying to be a know it all or smarter than everyone poster guy...just trying to raise awareness that sli/crossfire isnt the crap-shoot and waste of money it was 2 years ago.
@gritsshawn - You have massive plans to build a quad SLI rig with Core i7, 1200Watt PSU, 4 X 22" screens - Where on earth are you going to get the money (being 16) Seriously... you've got to let me know so I can cash in on this as well... so long as it's not nicking bikes from the front of shops! Bonzo
Really? 2 HD4850s don't get close. They can get to GTX285 levels but HD4870 X2??? Is something wrong here?
maybe it depends on your definition of close i guess. obviously it's on a game by game basis, and it's not always as close...but for what my client played (COD mostly, some world in conflict, grid, l4d), it was dead on really. in fact, i think the 4830 xfire rig outperformed the 4870x2 in COD...anyway, here was a link i found on a quick search. there are others...
